Wakaru?
by Doragonkasai-Tsubasa
Summary: Luck is a fickle thing, and not everyone is guaranteed a portion of it. But whoever said you can't make things work? AU. OC-insert.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto.

**Summary:** Luck is a fickle thing, and not everyone is guaranteed a portion of it. But whoever said you can't make things work?

**Author's Notes:** ...this is what happens when I'm at home thinking about how likely/unlikely it would be to be reborn into a _favorable_ position in any given world. Then I thought about the possibilities of someone being reborn into Root, and it just shot off from there. As it is this is "complete," but I may expand on it at a later date.

**General Warnings:** AU, possible OOC-ness, possible screwed up timings of events before start of canon.

* * *

_Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor._

_- Sholom Aleichem_

* * *

Like many of Life's most intricate plot twists, it begins with something small.

A life - a sum of memories, of personality, of a sense of person, of consciousness, of a soul - is small compared to the rest of the world.

But even the world is small compared to the universe, and the universe is small to the space-time dimension, and the space-time dimension is small to the entirety of all space-time dimensions.

So really, a life is minuscule, is _nothing,_ compared to the many, _many_ others in all of space and time.

.

Is it any wonder that one slips through the cracks?

.

There are always orphans in Konoha at any given time. It is a given fact, and it is only enhanced by a war that is currently rocking the entirety of the Hidden Countries. The civilians don't tend to survive long, and if they had children it is a very low possibility that anyone who could have taken them in is still alive. Shinobi children have it easier, because there are at least someone who feel responsible for them enough that they would take them in.

But those are rare cases, and in a war no one is willing to take in a child that they might not be able to provide for the next day.

There are always orphans in Konoha who would never be missed. The supplies that would have been given to them will go to someone in more need, and the village will have less mouths to feed. People will never look for children that go missing, because there are always more to care for, more to provide for.

It is pathetically easy for him to pick-and-choose the newest recruits for his army, especially in the chaos cast by the shadow of war.

.

Is it any wonder that one escapes with their memories intact?

.

He divides them up by gender. It is always easier to have an older male and a younger female, for the conditioning to truly stick, or vice versa, but sometimes he does not have enough of one gender to go around. So some locations have two males, or two females.

But it will not matter when he is finished.

.

There is a cabin in the woods. No one from the outside knows about it; only a select few know the location, and two of them are unable to contact the rest of the world.

There is a cabin in the woods. It is occupied, and by two children, no less. Some would say it is unsafe, but those in-the-know would only pity them.

There is a cabin in the woods. Alone. Such a thing is never a good sign.

.

Is it any wonder?

.

Sometimes she thinks that this new world is a punishment. That because of her failures, she was being forced to live through her memories again.

Then she realizes that, perhaps, she was needed here. For some reason or the other, she slipped through with her memories untouched, and even if it wasn't by purpose she'd be damned if she couldn't make a life for herself here.

(This theory is better than the one where her memories are left only so they could torment her for the rest of her new life. As if she didn't have enough to scare her little 'sister' at night already.)

So she picks herself up, dusts herself off, and moves on.

She knows she is late by five years (even if she's only been 'awake' since she was 'three'), but it is better than nothing.

_(Perserverantia.)_

.

For them, it is a normal day. The soup is on the fire, and they train with kunai and targets while waiting for it to cook. Two girls. Kyo. 9. Suzume. 11. Living together since they were small, and the younger had contact with only the elder and their Lord, as only the elder of them was permitted to head into town to buy food and supplies.

"That's all for today," Suzume says after one final round. Obediently Kyo starts to pick up stray kunai and pack them away with the battered targets as her 'sister' does the same, and together they head into the small but well-built and well-maintained cabin with their equipment in tow. They are alone on the mountain.

Smoke curls up through the chimney into an unseen sky as the duo eats in comfortable silence. Then,

"Danzo-sama was here today... He said there was a test in one week."

A pause between swallows as the younger thinks over the words, then a quick nod to show understanding before they move on from the topic.

Suzume is not stupid. She knows what this means, even if Kyo doesn't. She heard the rumors, the speculations, the warnings. She thought they had more time.

But in the middle of a war, they take what they can get for a shinobi.

Suzume is not naive; she knows.

She knows.

.

Imagine helplessness. Unable to do anything, say anything, virtually prove to anyone that you are _anything, _that you even _exist_.

Imagine silence. Crushing, cloying, _chocking_, and above all, damning.

Imagine senselessness. No sight, no sound, no taste, touch, smell - being cut off from the world with no way back.

Imagine _dying_. Shock, pain, despair, the futile attempts to grasp at straws and the one ray of hope that keeps dancing just out of reach. _"No, no, no, not yet, not just yet - !"_

Imagine slipping away from that nightmare... and waking up to another one.

.

Kyo doesn't survive the brutal test. It's not a wonder.

Suzume retreats into herself, letting a blank, mindless drone's personality take over. It doesn't rouse even a hint of suspicion.

She does her work as expected, and when she can, she tries to disappear into anonymity. Into the shadows, where no one notices her for what she is. Where she isn't singled out, and where she can become someone, and no one.

Distance makes the work easier, the _memories_ easier, or so she likes to think.

_(It doesn't.)_

.

If today was your last day, what would you do? Would you say goodbye to friends and family, even the ones you're not familiar or all that friendly with, knowing you would never see them again? Hear them again? Be with them again?

If today was your last day, what would you do? Would you cry and beg and scream, _"No, no, no, it's not my time_ _yet_"? Would you shout and rage and spit, _"I can't die, I have things to do, sights to see, people to meet"_? Would you say, desperately, bitterly, heatedly, _"It's not fair"_?

If today was your last day, what would you do? Would you make each moment last? Give away things you don't need? Forgive old slights and enemies, try and leave a mark on the world?

If today was your last day, what would you do?

.

Years pass. She knows because although can't count the exact days or months, but she can count the seasons. These days, she counts by winters _(it's been three since _that day_)_, and idly plays number games in her head as her blank-mask settles more and more firmly in her mind. It keeps her from the worst of the conditioning, and lets her keep her intuition from another life, where sharp minds and sharp wits were needed to merely survive and barely break even, where the odd, tingling feeling nibbling at the senses was the only warning in the calm before the storm.

With the years comes change. The war that defined much of her childhood - _(if she ever had one, a voice in her mind whispers, and she shoves it into the corner that she keeps her true self in)_ - is over. The end does not change a lot of things for those dwelling below the ground, but for the people above them, it's a world's difference.

Honestly, she doesn't notice that. Things are changing for her, in the world untouched by sunlight. Because at the start of her time here she was told to forget her name – that in this organization there was no sense of self. That there is nothing _but _this organization for them, and that one must be ready to obey Danzo-sama, no matter the instructions. Trustingly. Willingly. Blindly.

_(It goes against an entire lifetime of teachings.)_

But as she keeps up her charade, she is eventually given a name to her mask - her original name instead of the title she was assigned.

Danzo tells her she is now 'Suzume' and not 'Operative 412.' The name from her earlier days.

She feels like laughing hysterically. Has she not always been Suzume? Even in her time as Operative 412, has it not always been Suzume that was tasked with carrying out missions that even AnBu turned down? Given, all of that is done behind the mask, but it does not stop anything.

It does not keep her from feeling. It does not even stop her from doing her work.

She does her work well. Very, very, well.

_(It's been a long time since she's started to hate herself, whether she's Suzume or or Operative 412 or the one from before.)_

...All too well.

.

Danzo is always on the lookout for talented soldiers to command his shadow ranks.

.

What is freedom?

.

It starts with little things.

A little more leeway during missions, a little more room for creative strategies while completing instructions on an assignment, a little more flexibility in who she can talk to, when she can talk to them. Snatches of time, available for a nice, neat, convenient information leak about Root.

It's small, but it's noticeable.

She recognizes it for what it is. A test. To see if she would obey like a good little pawn, or take the freedom and run with it.

She does the former, aware of what the manipulative man is doing, but doing it anyway. She has already died once; she is not eager to repeat the experience. No matter how horrible her circumstances now were.

_(I'm not giving up. Not just yet.)_

.

He moves onto bigger things. First partner assignments, then ones with a team.

Now he's testing her leadership ability. Anyone that's not brainwashed - sadly, there isn't anyone in their little 'club' who isn't already - can see it.

The part of her from _Before_ scoffs at the man, insulted that he is implying she cannot lead her team – her _people_, her _brothers and sisters,_ even if they didn't know it, didn't realize it, didn't _feel_ it_ - _ into battle and accomplish the mission parameters, and emerge with everyone alive, if not intact.

The part of her from _Now_ dutifully does her work, following her Lord's directions to the letter, to the last stroke and characteristical calligraphic lilt.

Both of them are biding their time.

_(Perserverantia.)_

.

Suzume means sparrow. A name for someone who lives for the sky, for the freedom in the unbound plane.

Suzume is a name one hastily gives to a child. But it is all she has.

_(It is a better name than 'Sai.' So distant, so uncaring. She wonders if she'll meet him here. If she survives that long.)_

She always thinks it's an irony that she's named after a bird who is known for its loyalty to the sky when she's bound to the realm beneath the earth.

.

It comes earlier than expected.

.

Freedom: noun. The power to determine action without restraint.

.

He takes her in, and makes her one of his second-in-commands. The compartmentalized nature of the organization has already made her a trusted agent in the eyes of her fellow soldiers just by a chance meeting in the hallways or a single mission run together, but her new-found rank – given by the Lord _himself_ – prompts them to follow her instructions with the quickness one would usually reserve for a Daimyo, or for _him_, however superficial it may be.

The girl is one that he picked up in an orphanage. Although the soldiers chosen from there do not have any kekkei genkai or family-restricted kinjutsu that he can use like the ones from the clans, he finds the orphanage ones – especially the ones that he's trained from infancy – to be more loyal to him.

He knows the dangers of letting his agents gain loyalty from the others, especially this particular girl. But as much as he would like to, he cannot be everywhere, and so he can only leave his precious organization to his most trusted.

He never gives one person total control. To do so would be signing his own death warrant.

However...

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." Although some would think that expecting treachery from his own people - the ones that he made sure was his, that he _brainwashed_ - would be madness, he does not take any chances. Rather that he take this particularly intuitive pawn in now, and tie her firmly to him, than lose her loyalty later and her mind – the mind that was admittedly _smart,_ so smart it would make a _Nara_ proud with its inventiveness, which could be _his_ – in the process.

.

People are paranoid. It is a given fact.

Shinobi, doubly so. They have good reason.

.

She is not the only one who leads Root. There are two others, both having been snatched from their clans for their respective kekkei genkai. They work together to limit her power over the operatives they are in charge of. To limit her exposure to them. To limit her influence on them.

They both are entirely under Danzo's control.

She knows her survival depends on her ability to act she is the same.

_(Perserverantia.)_

.

There are many weapons choices in the shinobi world. Konoha has a formidable selection, but Root has access to a wider market than even the forges and blacksmiths of the Village Hidden in the Leaves, given that its members venture into countries where trade is not established between them and the Land of Fire. Any one of the weapons offered by the Root armory is a good choice.

She doesn't choose any of them, instead using the Root standard tip-less tanto.

For all her achievements, her acknowledgements, she still prefers to blend into the crowd.

It doesn't always work.

.

_"In Root, you have no name. You have no feelings. You have no past. You have no future. There is only the mission."_

Her mission could be classified as suicidal.

She doesn't have a choice.

.

What is freedom?

.

To his amazement - not that he'd admit that to her, to _anyone_ -, she comes back alive. Wounded, bleeding all over with multiple broken bones and chakra depletion, and looking like something straight out of a battle in the war, but she comes back alive. And her assignment – the one turned down by_ AnBu_ as impossible to complete safely, at least without any casualties – completed. Solo.

Danzo is impressed. _This_ is the loyalty he is looking for in his troops. Perhaps his trust in her is not misplaced, after all.

...No. It is too early to tell. For now, he would keep Suzume on subtle observation by Jun and Masa, his two clan second-in-commands, until he has, without a doubt, her loyalty.

Her intuition is too risky for him to move freely around. Even brainwashed and under his complete control from childhood, she has a 'sixth sense' for people. More than once now he used her to sniff out infiltrators from rival villages in his precious Konoha – not that she knew what she was doing, of course. Better that he take his time than ruin a good harvest.

He spent too much time on her, after all.

.

Time passes.

Disaster strikes.

_(We are only humans, after all.)_

.

Consequences are met.

.

There is another war. This time, started by a Konohan shinobi.

She feels like laughing hysterically, but she is in Root base, and so with the many eyes watching she instead laughs bitterly in her mind as she keeps her face blank, like she's been doing for the last few... years.

_(...Has it been that long already?)_

She was old enough to catch the ending battles of the Second Great Shinobi War. She had gotten closer to war than she would have liked.

_(Close... too close.)_

And now they are plunging into war again... Given, she has heard somewhere that the shinobi who is being blamed for the start of the war - apparently someone named 'Hatake Sakumo' - had been caught in his mission trying to save his comrades.

She... can respect him for that. She may still... _dislike_ him (only dislike because emotion was _not allowed_)_,_ but she can respect him for that.

She can't show that, of course, especially with Danzo-sama's rants - if they could be called rants; they were more like accusations hurled while pacing an empty, secure room in Root base that only his guards and operatives heard - at how the foolish man is endangering Konoha and deserved the seppuku that he inflicted on himself.

She only uncurls her fists in her command rank bedroom, on her bed, which is just the same as the rest of the operatives' public racks, only private. On her wall are marks. Kunai scratch marks.

They count the winters that she's lived to see.

_(Winters, because the snow covers everything in its white, white blanket. It used to be her favorite time of year, in another life.)_

She counts six since the end of the war.

_(And now they are heading back in...)_

.

_(Kill or be killed._

_Such a nice lesson. A _helpful_ lesson, even. One certainly true in war.)_

She meets Hatake Kakashi - the Hatake Sakumo's brat - during the war. At a battle in a pass, actually, when she and her squad are posing as chunin and genin.

The little brat is a chunin as well, and according to the files in Root about him, a prodigy. She doesn't doubt the intel.

_(It may have something to do with something she read a long, long time ago... Another life, it could count as.)_

Her squad and his, with genin Nohara Rin and Uchiha Obito (an orphan and the Sharingan clan's black sheep, if she remembers correctly) and Namikaze Minato, their jounin leader, come across each other by accident. She had been trying to keep up the charade that their Root squad really is only made of chunin and genin when they'd been jointly ambushed.

Five Iwa chunin and two chunin and a jounin from Team Minato's ambush were alive at the start of the fight. At least half of them ended up with fatal wounds from a Hirashin kunai by the end of it.

Namikaze Minato offered to escort the other squad back home. The chunin leader Okabe Izumi agreed.

_(Okabe Izumi is just one of the many, many names she's used in this lifetime. It makes it hard to differentiate who she is. Who she was, and will be, but mostly_ is._)_

They didn't see each other after that, but she knows that the stories in her head are true - Namikaze Minato _will_ become the Yellow Flash, and will end this ridiculous war.

_(...She can see the light at the end of the tunnel.)_

.

Daysweeksmonthsyears pass, until the war is finally over. Those in the front lines are called back home, and the inconspicuous Root members planted in Konoha's ranks, both regular like she'd been in and in AnBu, are pulled back as well. She is among them, having led the small contingent according to Danzo's directions that he set before they left.

She is particularly proud that she herself has not lost a single agent, even if there were a few close calls and some that would be only fit for civilian-spy duty after losing a limb or receiving some other crippling injury.

_(Root does not waste. It may clean house, but it does not waste.)_

She would swear that they had a death wish - their mind was, and is, always focused on the mission, and not on their survival. She tries to protect them all, but some always slip out of her grasp, like water through spread fingers. She wishes she can order them to stay put, out of harm's way, because they were only children, and they were fighting a war.

_(Seventeen, like she is, or sixteen, fifteen, fourteenthirteentwelve - they were all children. They didn't deserve this._

_None of them did.)_

But she is playing the part of a brainwashed pawn of Danzo's, so she would follow his orders.

_(Even if her blank-mask was breaking from the pressure of the things that she did, saw, heard, felt - there is truly nothing like war, like the_ massacre_ that took place when one step was wrong, one mistake was made._)

The Third Great Shinobi War is over, but not before legends are born: the Sasori of the Red Sand, the Copy-Ninja Kakashi, and probably the most famous of them all, the Yellow Flash, the one who rumors suggest will be the next Hokage.

Suzume knows an opening when she sees one.

.

It is only after she and the agents in her care arrive back at the Root base in Konoha that she learns of Amegakure's fall, with assistance from Root.

She thinks she has never been more disgusted with the organization she works for than now. Helping an entire _country_ fall? She knew, _knows,_ Danzo was mad - _(insane, crazy, sadistic, neurotic)_ - but this, in terms from a life long past, takes the cake.

.

It's an easy choice.

.

The inauguration of the Yondaime Hokage is planned and executed without a single hitch. Yes, there were a few hiccups of dissenting opinions making themselves known and quietly but no-less violently refusing the peoples' favoured candidate, but those were dismissed as side effects of jealously, even if the dissenters would be watched for possible bitterness and signs of rebellion towards the new Hokage later on.

The inauguration of the Yondaime Hokage is colorful and happy, with streamers thrown over rooftops and lanterns for good luck hanging off of poles on every other house corner. The ceremony and speech had been well-attended and well-received, and the people are looking forward to a bright future after a devastating war.

The inauguration of the Yondaime Hokage is attended by watchful guards behind animal masks, both hidden and in plain sight, and by a girl hidden in the crowd before she moves along with the swarm of people after the speech into one of the many festively decorated streets and disappears.

.

She waits. Patiently, like she has done from ever since she returned to 'consciousness.' Since _that day_, since she underwent Danzo's crude training, since she has needed to watch her back in her own 'home.'

_(Patience is something she has been practicing for a long, long time.)_

It takes a few months, but it is worth it.

.

It causes a large scandal when it is revealed to the public. A village elder, going against his own Hokage? One of the most trusted, becoming a traitor? It had been unthinkable, but the impossible had happened.

Dirty secrets, had Danzo kept; clan children harvested for a private army, orphaned children used and discarded, a training and desensitizing course that seemingly came straight out of Kirigakure's own book. It is incredibly morale-damaging, but not so much as would have happened if the truth came out later.

_(It is horrifyingly similar to the Snake's betrayal.)_

Justice is served, the shinobi way. The private army is still missing, but the Hokage is not worried.

Blue eyes drill into a girl's back that seemingly melts into the crowd surging in the streets of Konoha as civilian and shinobi alike gossip at the recent betrayal by Village Elder Shimura Danzo.

.

There is a subtle, but still present, panic in Root headquarters. Their leader is gone, and even with two of three second-in-commands doing their best to restore order, it is not enough. As the public announcement of his betrayal ripples throughout all of Konohagakure, all of Root are on stand-by - the outlying agents having been called in by their Lord beforehand - waiting for orders from Danzo-sama on how to respond. They never come.

There is a subtle, but still present, panic in Root headquarters. A girl - no, a woman, really - shunshins in, and takes in the discomfort that Root agents are only allowed to show through tighter grips on weapons, the consistent sharpening of blades already sharpened. It is almost heavy in the air, unexpectedly heavy for a group that is trained to kill all emotion, all doubt.

There is a subtle, but still present, panic in Root headquarters. It disappears when the final second-in-command takes charge.

.

She is sitting on top of the Hokage monument underneath a starry sky. It is the Second's head that they are on, and he feels like they are on common footing, even if he is technically Hokage and she technically a genin in the village's records.

_(He doubts that because she is so much more than 'just a genin'__ - he feels it, the way he knows a seal will go wrong or the instinctive understanding of jutsus, both ground-changing and lethal alike, even when they are in the middle of being used against him.)_

She stands up when he approaches her, carefully; they both know this is a confrontation, and they both know they have something on the other. He, the power and rank, and therefore influence, that he is known for, and she, the knowledge that she possesses.

When she turns around, he can see the details previously obscured to him by the crowd under the starlight. She is average height, lean, and seemingly relaxed, and could not be any older than eighteen from what he can see - _(...Has he seen her somewhere? She feels familiar...)_ - but he knows not to trust that easily. Greater shinobi than she had fooled him with seemingly weaker positions.

_(The man, how could he have _trusted_ him, he should have _seen_ it_ coming_. He should have _been better_.)_

A wind passes, flicking blond hair into his face and brown hair into hers. It would have been a disadvantage had they been fighting, but they aren't.

_('Yet,' a suspicious voice in his head whispers, and he does not deny it, but he does not acknowledge it, either.)_

Silence. As instigator, she goes first.

She opens her mouth.

And offers him a deal.

_(It's better than what he had been hoping for.)_

.

There is a seal branded on every Root operative's tongue. It is three solid lines and two broken lines from the back of the tongue to the tip. It is placed there personally by Danzo, and it paralyzes the agent the moment they start speaking about Root. Its effectiveness in concealing information that was not intended to leak is considered nigh foolproof. But there is one problem with the seal; a problem at its very _purpose_.

The seal only stops the agent from speaking. It does not do anything for writing.

_(Silly, silly Danzo; relying on loyalty only to protect him, and not implementing a contingency plan should it fail as he usually does. Bad for him, good for her.)_

The seal disappears when Danzo dies. She is free to speak.

.

Freedom. Freedom to choose, freedom to live, freedom to _be_.

It's refreshing.

.

They have their work cut out for them. Minds _broken_, wills _destroyed_ and _gone_. Emotions unstable and the need for mental balance clear.

They can't believe this was actually happening right under their watch. Shouldn't they have been more careful, more vigilant? More up-to-date, more skilled, more inquiring and more stubborn in pursuing shadowy leads?

But.

They reminiscence on the past, yes, but they don't believe in staying there. They believe in moving on, and fixing what _can_ be fixed now, and not dwelling on _couldhavewouldhaveshouldhave_.

They have their work cut out for them, and they'll be damned if they can't finish it.

.

Change is in the wind.

Danzo is gone, and she has made peace with the Yondaime, and with Jun and Masa. The two of them had tentatively began to grow back into themselves. All of Root are, after the miracle workers at T&I ran them through a program that was designed to counter their desensitizing training. They are growing as individuals, as people, and Suzume is proud.

Root is also collaborating with AnBu now instead of snatching missions behind their back. She thinks that is one of her more better thought-out clauses in the agreement that she and the Yondaime have made. Of course, he had arguments for her, and she had conceded to a mental stability check every month on each of her operatives' parts until they were deemed safe by the Psychology department.

Her operatives. The Yondaime had given her control over Root, saying that she knew them best. She knew that was a lie - it was more likely he wanted to be able to deal with a known quantity, after all - but she appreciated it anyway. She'd started caring for them even under the former commander's rule, and with her new position she could guarantee that all of them came home to the best of her ability.

New commander, new Hokage, new position in life.

Change is certainly in the wind.

.

_A tale of a girl who was thrown into the darker side of life without a care from the universe, into the deep end, learning how to swim and snatching a life boat while doing so to see if she can save the poor souls drowning witharoundbeside her._

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